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Some of you have heard hints that I've been working on a new edition of the YAMS cards, and now it's reached the point for alpha testing by a wider group.

NOTE - THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!

If you haven't heard of YAMS, it was a set of random cards for generating mission objectives that was created four years ago, and became the standard for Infinity tournaments up until Corvus Belli released official ITS missions. You can download the old 1.1 version here.

DESIGNER NOTES

I had several criteria while working on the new version:

The basic game must be simple, but with enough variety for replay value.

It will still be a card-based system with semi-random objectives. For a more narrative-based approach, I recommend having a look at @Prophet_of_Doom's 20x20 system.

The old Objective Cards need rebalancing and updating to N3 terminology.

The old Civvie, Crate and Flag objectives needed reworking, and integrating more into the Objective Cards.

YAMS2 is not designed as a tournament mission system, and should feel different to the ITS missions.

I wanted to add a second level of pre-game strategies.

Where appropriate, mission rules from the N3 rulebook have been used, for familiarity.

As much of the system must be on the cards as possible, while keeping a sane number of cards.

Shake up the games!

Objective Cards

The core of YAMS2 is still the Objective Cards. They've been reduced in number but are now worth 2pt each, mainly to aid in balancing. Most of the killing-oriented cards have been completely removed, on the grounds that players are already trying to do that.

Another major change is how the Objective Cards are drawn and chosen - you still draw six, but the first thing you do is choose one of those to be a public joint objective* worth double points, then discard two. The rest remain as hidden secondary objectives. This means that you end up playing for two public objectives and then your three hidden ones.

*With a tip of the hat to @Certs who I believe was the originator of this YAMS variant.

Several ITS concepts like Controlling an item or Dominating an area have been borrowed, again to make it easier for players that swap between systems.

Sample:

Objective Markers

YAMS1 had a Civvie and Crate on the halfway line, and a Flag in each deployment zone. However they often didn't play any part in a game if the relevant Objective Cards weren't drawn and chosen.

The Civvie has been replaced by a High Value Target for each player. This is a fairly direct lift from the rulebook missions and should therefore be familiar to everyone, with the addition of being able to synchronize with your own HVT or the enemy one.

The Crate has been replaced by three Consoles. These are placed alternately starting by the player who will be going first, and must be placed over the halfway line. In practice this means that they tend to be in a zig-zag along the middle of the table. They are destroyable terrain items.

The Flag is no longer a Camouflage marker in your Deployment Zone but is a visible piece of destroyable terrain. It has the Baggage skill, increasing your Retreat threshold and letting your troopers reload with a Short Skill. Experimental - the ZoC of the Flag counts as part of your Deployment Zone, giving you a bubble of extra space, but also encouraging you to put it far enough forwards that it's at risk. However this has some balance issues so is likely to change.

Roughly half of the Objective Cards involve interacting with the HVTs, Consoles or Flags. This makes your opponent's aims slightly more predictable, but also gives the games more focus by pretty much guaranteeing that the battlefield objectives will impact the game.

Strategy Cards

This is a major addition. In a similar manner to the Objective Cards, the Strategy Cards are drawn before the game starts. However they represent not the mission objectives but pre-battle scouting, manoeuvring, espionage etc. You get four cards and each has three abilities on it, but you have to choose one of those three abilities. For example the Advance Scouting Strategy Card lets you either increase an infiltrating troop's Infiltration skill by one level or increase a trooper's Forward Deployment skill level by one (including from zero to L1) or give a trooper the Multiterrain skill. Although there are currently 17 different abilities on the cards, they are spread across only six different cards, to make them easier to learn.

Strategy Card abilities are played before deployment, during deployment or after deployment, as written on the card.

Sample:

Battlefield Conditions

This is a set of random conditions for the battlefield. It's mainly there to shake things up so that players are facing different challenges from normal. They currently include alternative Deployment Zone layouts, whether there is an Exclusion Zone and whether there is a Storm during the first Game Round. I will probably add different game length and end-game conditions as extra options.

At the moment the Battlefield Conditions are rolled for on a table, but the eventual aim is to include symbols on the Strategy Cards so that you an randomise them by drawing cards, then reshuffle before drawing your Strategy hand.

LAYOUT NOTE

The pages are laid out as A4, but should print OK on US Letter as long as you make sure that the card pages are set yo print at 100%. The cards themselves are sized to fit in standard card sleeves. The cards are not 'designed' at this point, as I expect the text to change a bunch of times...

KNOWN ISSUES

The interaction of the Corner Square DZ layout, using the Flag to extend your DZ and then giving a trooper 1-2 levels of Forward Deployment has caused alpha-strike issues...

SUMMARY

So there are three main components to YAMS2 - Objective Cards and Objective Markers, Strategy Cards and Battlefield Conditions. If you want a simple pick-up-and-play game, just use the Objective Cards & Objectives. For a full-blown game, use everything. If you're feeling adventurous, take the Battlefield Conditions and Strategy Cards and combine them with an ITS mission for something completely different - but with no guarantee of balance...

WHAT'S NEXT?

Download the PDF, have a read through, play a game or two, then come back and give me feedback.

UPDATE March 2017

I've finally uploaded the YAMS 2 alpha 3 file to my own server to get around the file attachment issues with the forum move...

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I have read the new system now. Of course I still have to give it a big think before I give a more thorough analysis.

However, one thing that strikes me is that as an Ariadna player I find the battlefield conditions table rather frustrating. 40% chance of not neither having an exclusion zone nor a storm is not so nice when the strength of your faction is infiltration and the access to msv is pretty limited. I understand that I can have a pick from two lists. Why not add in a electric storm causing white noise for the balance? Or bring in a weather forecast strategic card to cancel the storm event.

Questions: When I add one to the infiltration level of the trooper, does that mean any trooper can get inferior infiltration, including TAGs?

"Costs one extra card." means the player has to give up another strategy card for the sake of putting a trooper in suppression fire?

0

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Can't wait to try this out! One question: for the split deployment, if a player chooses deployment do they determine if they want the single small zone or two split zones, or are those predetermined by table side/initiative order?

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If someone has the Outmaneuvered ability, when do they decide they will choose to re-roll initiative vs the other options? Are they able to simply lose the Initiative roll then decide?

If you want to re-roll for Initiative you need to do so 'Immediately after rolling.'. The other two abilities are used in the 'before deployment' phase.

4 hours ago, what_is_tactics? said:

Really like the flag extending ZoC idea. I think other rules and abilities should be changed to accommodate this rather than removing it if it synergises a bit too well with other abilities.

4 hours ago, prophetofDoom said:

I have read the new system now. Of course I still have to give it a big think before I give a more thorough analysis.

However, one thing that strikes me is that as an Ariadna player I find the battlefield conditions table rather frustrating. 40% chance of not neither having an exclusion zone nor a storm is not so nice when the strength of your faction is infiltration and the access to msv is pretty limited. I understand that I can have a pick from two lists.

I will be looking at reducing the frequency of the Exclusion Zone, and probably the Storm as well. Also, the ability to deploy near your HVT will probably become a default rather than needing a Strategy Card.

As far as Storm conditions are concerned, I think you may be doing Ariadna a disservice. Thanks to Mavericks and Minutemen, vanilla Ariadna has higher AVA of MSV1 than most factions have of MSVs, the Visibility MODs stack with all the Camo MODs and the MOV difficulty has no effect on 4-4 troops.

4 hours ago, prophetofDoom said:

Why not add in a electric storm causing white noise for the balance? Or bring in a weather forecast strategic card to cancel the storm event.

White Noise would have a far more binary effect as it would prevent MSV troops from being able to draw LoFat all except when shot at, rather than just reducing their effectiveness. However I'm considering making Zero Visibility gain the Reflective trait in Storm conditions, and possibly letting troops with Multiterrain ignore Low Visibility Zones during Storm conditions.

4 hours ago, prophetofDoom said:

Questions: When I add one to the infiltration level of the trooper, does that mean any trooper can get inferior infiltration, including TAGs?

No, for the obvious balance reasons.

You can increase an infiltrating trooper's level of the Infiltrate skill but you can't add it from scratch.

However you can give Forward Deployment L1 to a trooper that doesn't have it, and then use a second card to bump it up to L2 etc.

4 hours ago, prophetofDoom said:

"Costs one extra card." means the player has to give up another strategy card for the sake of putting a trooper in suppression fire?

Yes. This is the remnant of a mechanic that largely got dropped, and will probably get changed to costing a Command Token instead.

2 hours ago, LeemanRuss said:

Can't wait to try this out! One question: for the split deployment, if a player chooses deployment do they determine if they want the single small zone or two split zones, or are those predetermined by table side/initiative order?

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Yep, I guess I left out the new USAriadna profiles in my thoughts about the storm and MSV 1. I have to admit that this is due to the stupid selfish fact that I don t have the models. Ariadna should be able to deal with a bit of darkness in turm 1.

I agree that white noise is devastating to MSV models, and probably not the best idea. But the idea of the counter still stands. Maybe just a bit of more events? maybe dusk or dawn missions, etc. I got a table in reserve which I have not used.

i think the idea of a deployment bubble in ZOC of the HVT is pretty difficult to balance.

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I love the storm. Ariadna loves the storm. Briscards love the storm, Skirmishers love the storm, and I wish the storm was in ITS. It's brilliant that it only lasts for the first turn. You know who loves the storm? Bandits love the storm.

The possibly exclusion zone might hit Ariadna players harder than other factions, but only because you can't plan for it like you could in ITS, and the average infiltrator count for Ariadna might be higher. Many Yu Jing players say they always bring at least 2 Skirmishers anyway, and I'd rather a couple SAS and Chasseurs get bumped back than my Daofei. Or Malignos or Dasyus. When I look at it that way I'm not sure if there's an imbalance issue hidden in there, or just the phantom of one. I'll see how it plays out.

I'm not attached to the deployment expansion with the flag as much as the possibility of upgrading infiltration. The flag trick can be done every time, if it's abusable then someone is going to abuse it every game. Upgrading infiltration requires the card so is unpredictable, and the chaos element is good. I'd think that would be easier to balance because peoples lists and plans won't be consistently relying on it.

Edit: clarified some of my own questions with information already present.

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Sorry, I haven't had time to play it yet. Nobody wanted to play Infinity last week, and I'm running a demo on Monday (curse you new players ), so I won't get to try next week either. I'm intending to give you some feedback once I've played a game.